Andrew Carmellini’s Lafayette: How It’s Looking, What It’s Cooking

Like Wylie Dufresne, chef Andrew Carmellini has deep ties to the East Village. He’s lived in the neighborhood for years: you may have spotted him walking to work at The Dutch, his American tavern in SoHo, or coming home from The Library, the lounge he and his partners opened in The Public Theater in October. His wife and cookbook co-author, Gwen Hyman, walks to work, too: she’s a professor at Cooper Union.

This week, Mr. Carmellini opened his second restaurant in the neighborhood. Lafayette occupies the corner spot that housed Time Cafe when he first moved to New York. “It’s an amazingly beautiful building,” he said of the landmark Schermerhorn Building. “One of the first things we did was turn the lights back up on the building, here at nighttime, because it just has amazing features.”

Designed by Roman and Williams (no strangers to the neighborhood themselves) to evoke France’s “grand cafes,” the 150-seat, bi-level spot bills itself as a “light-filled restaurant” where the seasonal fare is light, as well.

Mr. Carmellini said some of his menu — which nods to Provence, Normandy, and the Mediterranean coast — would be “very classic, and some of it is going to be food you eat every day. You can stop by any time and grab a bite to eat, and also have an evening.”

See the menu for yourself below. Dinner is served from 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday to Wednesday, and until midnight Thursday through Saturday. The bakery opens at 7:30 a.m. during weekdays and at 8 a.m. on weekends. Daytime service is expected to start in the next couple of weeks.

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